~ Additive Manufacturing and Technology

Spring update

Despite the fact that it is astronomical spring here in the northeast US, still a pile of accumulated snow remains in my front yard. Hopefully it will not last much longer!

Since early February I’ve been focused at work on a number of extra projects and at my home shop, working on updates to current machines. So here is a brief summary as to where things are at this stage:

1. MakerBot Mini – working really well, new firmware released recently has made it quieter and the mandatory rafts are now much easier to remove.

2. Cube 3d Generation – with both client and firmware updates and along with some tweaks in the cartridge design have now made this machine very reliable (for me anyway) and builds are working in one or two color mode.

4. Zeepro Zim – the user interface has improved by leaps and bounds. The machine itself is solidly built and is probably the most quiet hardware out there. Now that cloud printing and remote control is available, it is one worth considering. To sweeten the deal, they were having a limited sale at their site http://www.zeepro.com recently.

A new addition to my software resources is Simplify3D. I’ll be doing a separate review soon, but wanted to mention that it does run a DaVinci 3D 1.0a machine just fine and the results are far better than the free client supplied from xyzprinting with the machine. In fact, their client software is probably the worst one out there — you’d think a large corporation could manage to create an exemplary user interface to their equipment. Their new Junior unit is now listed on Amazon for pre-order.